It is difficult to deal with a narcissist when you are a grown, independent, fully functioning adult. The children of narcissists have an especially difficult burden, for they lack the knowledge, power, and resources to deal with their narcissistic parents without becoming their victims. Whether cast into the role of Scapegoat or Golden Child, the Narcissist's Child never truly receives that to which all children are entitled: a parent's unconditional love. Start by reading the 46 memories--it all began there.

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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Feeling Invisible

This is one of the hardest posts I have
ever written. It is the reason I have written only one post in the last
month…because I have been struggling with this one. I keep shying away from
it…I open the page and write a few words and then find something to distract
myself. I procrastinate opening the page…I feel ambivalent about writing it…I
simultaneously want to write it and don’t want to. Avoidance keys in big here…I
am avoiding it emotionally, even though the mature adult in me makes me keep
coming back to it, like a parent saying to a reluctant kid “do your homework!”.
All this tells me that this is an issue I, personally, have not yet resolved.

When I was a kid my NM used to tell me
“Children should be seen and not heard,” “Silence is golden,” and that I should
only “speak when spoken to.” I quickly learned that the safest place for me to
be was in my room, doing something she would approve of if she happened to look
in on me…something not messy, like reading a book or doing homework. If I was
playing with my toys on the bedroom floor, I would be told to “clean up this
mess,” even if I was still playing with the items (assuming this was before she
decided to “clean my closet” while I was at school one day and give the
majority of my toys to the Goodwill). It was not until I was in high school and
living with my father that I learned this was not a natural state of affairs:
my stepmother became very angry with me for retreating to my room after I
finished the after-dinner clean up. She found it very anti-social of me whereas
I was doing my darndest to be on my best behaviour, which I defined as being
“out of sight and out of mind,” as I had learned from NM was the proper way to
behave.

But I wasn’t just invisible physically,
disappearing into solitude when my household chores were done. I felt invisible
on a deeper, more fundamental level, unheard, unseen, as if nothing I thought,
said, or felt was taken into account by others. I was emotionally isolated,
feeling disconnected from everyone else. My feelings or desires were seldom
elicited and even on the rare occasion when they were, I do not recall them ever
being taken into account: if decisions were made that were in sync with my
wishes, it was coincidental, not by design. People talked over the top of me,
behaved as if I was not in the room, would not allow me to finish articulating
a thought without either interrupting me or changing the subject mid-sentence.
It was as if I was the only one who knew I was there and felt or thought anything.

In later years, I married a malignant
narcissist and his behaviour exacerbated my feelings of tenuousness and
invisibility. The child of an immature, self-interested mother who nagged and
harangued her weak, unassertive husband endlessly while wrapped in her martyr’s
cloak, he was ambivalent about his father: on the one hand he despised him for
meekly submitting to his mother’s constant demands, on the other hand, he
identified with his father and was outraged on his father’s behalf. It took
several years of marriage to this man to come to the realization that I did not
exist in his world, that I was simply a female body upon which he projected his
mother and interacted with me as if I were she, while he behaved as he believed
his father should have.

This was absolutely dehumanizing. Just as,
when I was a child and I was unacknowledged as anything other than an extension
of my mother (and a nuisance when I asserted myself as anything else), that
which was me did not exist. He saw me as his mother…even though she and I were
as different as chalk and cheese…with a different face. He and I once had a row
over…well, I didn’t know what it was over: he came home from work angry and I
assumed something had happened at work (something was always happening at work
to tick him off) but it turned out he was angry with me. As it happened, on his
commute home he had held a conversation in his head with me, and the responses
he attributed to me were things his conservative mother would have said, not
the kinds of things that would come out of my uber-liberal mouth. By the time
he got home, he was angry with me because of him attributing his mother’s
attitudes to me. Somewhere in all of this, the beliefs and values and attitudes
and feelings that were mine went completely unacknowledged. Why? Because to
him, the person who was me was never acknowledged, did not exist. I was a
convenient blank upon which to superimpose the persona of his mother.

The problem with this is that when you are
not acknowledged, when you cannot see yourself mirrored in others, when they do
not reflect back to you, like answering your questions or laughing at your
jokes or responding to your greetings in an appropriate way, if your sense of
self is not immensely secure, you begin to lose it. Jack’s anger at me, based
on his fantasy conversation, was wholly inappropriate and so to snarl at me
with that anger when I said “Hi, babe, how was your day?” was not only wholly inappropriate,
it negated my very existence and focussed instead on the projection of his
mother on onto me. To ignore my existence or, as my NM did, my achievements in
school, by refusing to attend the choir concerts in which I was a featured
soloist, failing to attend my high school academic awards ceremonies, even my
high school graduation, is to act like the person does not exist, as if she
were invisible. And if you get enough of that kind of treatment from the
significant people in your life, you begin to feel invisible, too…you begin to
wonder if there is really anything to see, since nobody else seems to see it.

It goes deeper than that, even. Have you
ever said something in a group of people and nobody even acknowledged you spoke?
Have you ever asked a question and the person to whom it is directed acts as if
you were not even in the room? Have you ever been in a group and what you have
to say is not ignored so much as it is not even heard? Absent strong
self-esteem, such experiences can make you feel disconnected, unbalanced…as if
you exist only at their pleasure and the rest of the time you don’t. It makes
you feel unimportant, devalued, diminished, invisible, shunned.

Shunning is “…the act of social rejection...
Social rejection is when a person or group deliberately avoids association
with, and habitually keeps away from an individual or group. This can be a
formal decision by a group, or a less formal group action which will spread to
all members of the group as a form of solidarity. It is a sanction against
association… Targets of shunning can include …anyone the group perceives as a
threat or source of conflict. Social rejection has been established to cause
psychological damage and has been categorized as torture.

“Shunning is often used as a pejorative
term to describe any organizationally mandated disassociation, and has acquired
a connotation of abuse and relational aggression. This is due to the sometimes
extreme damage caused by its disruption to normal relationships between
individuals, such as friendships and family relations. Disruption of
established relationships certainly causes pain, which [may] be an intended,
coercive consequence. This pain, especially when seen as unjustly inflicted,
can have secondary general psychological effects on self-worth and
self-confidence, trust and trustworthiness, and can, as with other types of trauma,
impair psychological function.

“Shunning often involves implicit or
explicit shame for a member who commits acts seen as wrong by the group or its
leadership. Such shame may not be psychologically damaging if the membership is
voluntary and the rules of behavior were clear before the person joined.
However, if the rules are arbitrary, if the group membership is seen as
essential for personal security, safety, or health, or if the application of
the rules is inconsistent, such shame can be highly destructive. This can be
especially damaging if perceptions are attacked or controlled, or various tools
of psychological pressure applied. Extremes of this cross over the line into psychological
torture and can be permanently scarring.

“A key detrimental effect of some of the
practices associated with shunning relate to their effect on relationships,
especially family relationships. At its extremes, the practices may destroy
marriages, break up families, and separate children and their parents. The
effect of shunning can be very dramatic or even devastating on the shunned, as
it can damage or destroy the shunned member's closest familial, spousal,
social, emotional, and economic bonds.

“Shunning contains aspects of what is known
as relational aggression in psychological literature… Extreme shunning may
cause traumas to the shunned (and to their dependents) similar to what is
studied in the psychology of torture.”

A key word in this explanation of shunning
is “rejection.” Ignoring someone, treating them as if they do not exist, is a
passive aggressive form of rejection. In very young children, this is perceived
as being life threatening: if their primary care giver does not acknowledge
their existence, they cannot be entirely sure that their survival needs will be
met. If the passive rejection is habitual, is it any wonder the child becomes
habitually anxious with respect to his survival and even questions his
existence? When you don’t seem to exist to another person, when you are
acknowledged in only the most necessary ways…and when that acknowledgement
often includes a negative or critical component…a child’s self perception is
inevitably damaged. Such children may become shy, withdrawn, fearful. But not
always…

“… sometimes the Invisible Childcan hide
behind an effective façade of the bubbly center-of-attention favorite friend.
In private the Invisible Child puts the mask away feeling more unseen and
unknown than before. The Invisible Child often feels alienated from society and
from what they refer to as ‘normal’ people. It is difficult to claim the
physical body, to make opinions known and to voice feelings. Thus, the poser
becomes the preferred method for surviving in a social world. The Invisible
Child becomes masterful at creating an image that others find acceptable and to
behave in a way that others approve of in order to be seen. This only engenders
feelings of inadequacy and self-rejection…”The best analogy I can think of for this is the Invisible Man: it is not
until he puts on clothes that he is visible to others, and even then, he is not visible, only his clothes; when an Invisible Child put on a mask, assumes a
public persona, the Invisible Child is still not seen, even though the faux
personality may attract both attention and even admiration.

This pretty accurately describes how I
lived most of my life and, to some extent, still live it today. If you were to
meet me in person, you would find me friendly, effusive, outgoing, even funny.
I am known to be an entertaining storyteller, a thoughtful hostess, and
fearlessly assertive. You would never guess that I actually prefer to spend
hour upon hour of quiet time alone, that I am “on” when others are around, but
I am actually quietly introspective and prefer quiet, solitary pursuits over
loud socializing.

Psychologist Joseph Burgo, PhD, writes
about a patient who does not wish to terminate therapy, even though he believes
she is ready: “Lately, I’ve also been thinking about a parenting style that
isn’t overtly abusive but vacant or largely withdrawn instead. In such a case…the
person also develops a sense of unreality, as if he were invisible. It’s as if
she looked into the mirror of her mother’s face and found no reflection
whatsoever…On some level, she’s afraid that without me and my attention, she
would cease to exist. As a child, she must have felt that way in the absence of
parental involvement: as if she were invisible, a ghost child without physical
substance.”

I can really relate to this feeling: when I
was about 7 years old, my mother drove a very distinctive car…my father had had
it painted hot pink for her. I remember walking home from school one day, along
a very busy road, and seeing my mother’s car pass me en route home. I jumped up
and down and waved and screamed “Mommy! Mommy! I’m here!” but she drove on
past. Obviously, she didn’t see me trudging along the bridge, and I was
crushed. How could she not see and recognize me? I cried for the next block or
so, feeling painfully invisible, but dried my tears and put on my “cheerful,
ebullient” look before entering the house…I might only have been 7, but I knew
I was not allowed to be sad, hurt, or unhappy about anything in front of her…to
do so was to invite punishment.

Many of us carry this invisible feeling
with us into adulthood and as a result, many of us see rejection where it does
not exist. One of my most formidable tasks of recovery has been to puzzle out
when I am being consciously, intentionally ignored and when I am simply being
part of the background, like everybody else. I have learned that I tend to
insert value judgments where they do not really exist…like when a conversation
is going on and my contribution is not acknowledged, I default to “I am not
important, what I have to say is not important, they don’t want to hear what I
have to say, they act like I’m not here, they don’t like me…” this can escalate
mentally and emotionally, to an extreme degree (i.e. “nobody likes me, I am a
terrible person nobody likes”) unless I consciously step in and stop that train
of thought and remind myself that it is simply a conversation and my
contributions are not, at this time, especially relevant to the rest of the
group…which is a normal thing for everybody from time to time. Sometimes I have
to consciously remind myself that I am not being intentionally marginalized,
rejected, or shunned, however much my emotions default to that sad place. And sometimes
it is hard…really hard…to force myself to seize reality from the despair my
early conditioning foist upon me.

That is not to say that there are not
people who deliberately treat us this way, and that has been my big challenge:
to differentiate one from the other. My second biggest challenge is, when
recognizing someone is marginalizing me, to not fall into that feeling of
invisibility but, at the same time, not overreact and become over the top in my
response. It is a balancing act that, fortunately, I am not called upon to deal
with every day but when I am, it remains a challenge to me. I am particularly
called upon to exercise this when out in public and someone steps in front of
me in a queue, as if I was not there, or someone steals a parking place that,
with turn signals blazing, I intended to take. I am especially provoked when
someone makes assumptions about me or my motives, refusing to listen or
acknowledge my assertions and preferring to substitute his own perceptions.
This happened not too long ago when the spring in the door of my SUV (luxury
SUV with super-heavy doors and a heavy duty spring) got away from me and bumped
the mirror cowl of the car I was parked beside. I immediately snatched the door
back and was examining the mirror for damage when the owner showed up and
started screeching at me, accusing me of intentionally damaging her car (it was
unscathed), and telling me she paid for the car and I had no right to damage
it! I said “It was an accident, the door popped out of my hand,” and she just
continued to shriek accusations and abuse right over the top of me. And I felt,
simultaneously, invisible and the recipient of an unwarranted public tongue
lashing. And so I said, in a voice calculated to be heard over her unending
tirade, “It was an accident and your car is unhurt! You don’t have to be such a
bitch about it!” and walked away.

That may not have been the best way to
handle it, but I was suddenly visible to her, perhaps for the first time since
she opened her mouth. It was not characteristic of me…I am a person who would
die before creating a scene in public…but at least I was not paralyzed,
standing there silently for her unwarranted public dressing down. My husband
was shocked…this was the first time in the 12 years of our acquaintance he has
ever seen me speak out in such a manner…usually I apologize if warranted or if
not, I ignore the person and complain quietly to him later on. But I am working
on not falling into that passive, accepting-of-abuse childhood pattern that was
forced upon me in childhood, working on learning how to tell when I am
intentionally not being heard/included/acknowledged and when my “invisibility”
is just a normal thing for the time and place.

And that has been one of the big
realizations: that everybody gets ignored, overlooked, disregarded from time to
time, not just me. And they don’t react to it with anger, like Jack would, or a
feeling of humiliation, like my husband, or by feeling shunned and invisible,
like me. No, they roll with it, wait for another opportunity, and try again.
They make themselves known in ways that do not embarrass or attack or offend
others, they look for a way to fit into the situation seamlessly…to neither
stand out unnecessarily or to be noticed for their reticence. And while I tend
to be adept at this in social gatherings…that false persona of mine is very
adept in social situations like the office or at parties…it is much harder in
one-on-one or very small social groups, like with another 3 or 4 people at
dinner.

I don’t feel invisible like I did when I
was a kid, but I would be lying if I said I was past that problem at this stage
in my life. It was not until I saw a thread on Facebook, however, that I became
consciously aware of this, that I still struggle to deal with it, that the
feeling of invisibility still creeps over me in some situations and I have yet
to master it. I can only be thankful that my NM is long dead and not adding to
it with her drama…

23 comments:

Great post. Shunning is also contagious, sometimes conscious and unconscious. One thing that has always struck me as unjust or even cowardly is when people shun victims of bullying, out of fear of secondary association and becoming targets themselves. This is how bullying works. Create fear in those who are not targets, and then further isolate the target. It's a shameful form of behavior, and takes genuine courage to overcome. Bullies are ultimately so small, if people decide not to "bulk" them up through complicity or silence.

re: the Burgo quote about the "unreality" of it all, I remember for years being around my NM and her husband, even both my NP, and feeling that kind of 'unreality.' Like I was a ghost. Sometimes the occasion would be putatively to celebrate one of MY occasions. But I'd just vanish into their mutual narcissism, like I wasn't there at all. It's unbelievably weird and hard to explain to anyone who has not experienced this. It gets down into one's soul, and leaves a vulnerability to feeling dismissed or ignored.

I think that may be part of the difficulty I had in writing this. How do you describe or explain that feeling of disconnectedness so profound that you actually doubt your own existence? And tha vulnerability to feeling dismissed or ignored has not yet been overcome by me, although I must say it has improved dramatically over the years.

When I was married to my NexH, I remember being surprised at seeing myself in the mirror, I felt so fragile and almost transparent. It is difficult to articulate, but many was the time that I felt nobody could see ME...the me behind the face...and they saw only what they created or believed me to be. I am sure my NM's years-long smear campaign played into that...people saw what she had prepared them to see and they dismissed anything contrary they actually saw as me "acting" and "trying to fool them" (again, NM's perception), so that their perception of me was simply a projection over the reality of me that was never acknowledged.

It is still difficult to articulate but let me assure you, I totally get what you are saying. I have felt much the same.

Hi V, I know you get it. I used to feel "frozen" inside, around my NP, a weird kind of turning to stone; alternately, there were times that I wanted to scream at them, "I exist." In fact, I've had many many dreams over the years in which I am yelling this at them--I"M HERE. I am a person, I am real. The pathological way they make sure the surface looks normal while nothing really is, becomes absolutely crazy-making. IN me, it created conditions for depression. And the ripple effects, we try to get people to 'see' us for who we really are, then feel weird and inauthentic. I think that this kind of damage cannot be overstated, and its worse precisely because it is almost impossible to describe to others. "But they had a party in your honor!" Yeah, but they acted like I wasn't there. They only talked to each other. They directed minimum affect or attention at me. At, say, my wedding. Jesus. What do you do with this, ya know? How do you describe how they are always "spaced out" or preoccupied during anything having to do with you? (I know you know). I have a major narc wound around this, and am working hard to overcome it, to realize that while there are times when I SHOULD have been the center of my parents' attention (starting from when I was little), the rest of the world doesn't owe me that at all. And it has to be fine. We didn't get it from the people we needed it from, when we needed it--EVER. So the search will always be fruitless and futile. There are ways to recognize this, as you know, and move on. It's hard hard work. hugs back. CS

Wow. That was my childhood and most of my adulthood. I had a brief window of 8 years, between high school and marriage, where I was growing and feeling more alive and seen by others.But then, I married an N and I disappeared. I've been searching for a way to be myself again. It's hard. I live in his world, his state, town and everyone he knows. I must make my own place, no matter what he does. I can't wait for approval or understanding. I'll have to make my own friends, people he doesn't know. Otherwise it gets back to him and the comments start. Enough. I was invisible to my parents, to everyone at school, and in my marriage. I get to have a life now.

This is such an eye opener that I can relate to so much! I agree with you and Calibans Sister that narcissistic ignoring/snubbing can be so difficult to describe and pin down - I found it easier to describe with relevant examples in my guest post. It is like being a small ghost in your own life and if you haven't experienced this first hand it is near impossible to understand. The quotes and definitions you included were incredibly helpful and the words 'trauma/traumatised' and 'a form of torture' really stood out for me - for years I thought that simply being ignored by my family was not something to get so distraught over, but now I am starting to realise how destructive it truly is. Thank you for posting about such an important issue :)

Great article. Another point I would add is that when you are the abused child of a Narcissist and nobody acknowledges your abuse or acknowledges to you that the way you are being treated is wrong and not your fault this is another whole level of feeling invisible and like what you feel and think is of no consequence. It is downright crazy making....lived it and unfortunately seeing this happen with someone I love right now :(

I am really struggling with this right now. How do you know when someone is doing it intentionally (or is just an a-hole) versus the natural flow of conversation? Is it normal for someone to just not respond at all to 25% of what you say? Or to never respond normally, like never laughing at jokes, never understanding basic sentences, regularly responding only to parts of sentences? How do you even draw a line or put your foot down over something so bizarre?<3

You can't know...passive aggressive people will intentionally ignore you or withhold responses and when you call them on it, claim they didn't hear you or were distracted or some other kind of plausible excuse, turning it around to make it look like you are somehow wrong or too demanding. Which is why I think it doesn't matter if a person is doing it intentionally or just an a-hole: what the person is doing is just plain rude and disrespectful. And you have the absolute right to determine how much disrespect you are willing to tolerate in a relationship.

How much is "normal" in the natural flow of conversation? Depends on the people and the conversation. But if you notice either the group doesn't let you get a word in edgewise or a specific person (or people) fail to respond to you while responding to others, then it is a good bet you are being singled out for this treatment.

And you draw the line at being treated rudely and with disrespect...only you can determine just how much you are willing to tolerate.

Myself, I wouldn't make a big fuss over it, I would drop the person quietly because if a person is showing me disrespect, it means s/he doesn't respect me and may even be one of those people who think I have to earn his/her respect. Those people quickly and quietly become part of my history because I don't maintain relationships with people who are so full of themselves that they think the rest of the world has to turn itself on its ear to "earn" their respect. If they don't respect other human beings simply because those people exist and are therefore deserving, then they are too self-absorbed for me.

But you are not me, so you have to make your own determination as to how much disrespect is too much, and take action from there. Personally, I think if you have to point out to someone s/he is being disrespectful and then ask for them to treat you with respect and civility, the person is already a lost cause.

I cannot begin to tell you how much your post has resonated with me. I, too, grew up with a NM and experienced the same type of treatment as a child (and as and adult) from her until her death 7 years ago. I felt as though you were writing not only about your own life experiences, but about mine as well. Lately, I have been feeling extremely invisible and have been depressed as a result. Reading your post lets me know that I am not alone in this journey. I see you. Thank you for sharing yourself with me. (((HUGS)))

That is so right! I am being shunned by my entire family now. I have been NC for several months and plan never to see these people again. The fantasies remain, however, of telling my NexH off, or getting nasty in a witty way in my divorce response, including something snarky about the judge who denied my rights when N stole everything from me just before the discard. But I wont.

Your wise words remind me of what the advice columnest Ann Landers (or maybe it was her sister, Dear Abby) used to say. She said that when someone is giving you the silent treatment -- passive aggressive and disrespectful treatment, I would say -- it's best not to respond. Just put on your hat and wear it out the door.

(If you think about it, probably it's the thing that gets them really STEAMED!!)

The material on that link was actually written by The Harpy's Child, who occasionally comments on this blog. It is very insightful and extremely well-written and gave me a lot of food for thought when I first read it.

Agreed...very ironic...but a little sad when you consider that there are so many insensitive people out there that such a measure is necessary. Some days I reject more spam and troll/N attacks than I approve comments from readers!

This is a spot on description of how I have felt much of my life. At 57, and two years out of a 22 yr 'relationship' with an N spouse, it covers all the nebulous feelings of not-there-ness. Overlooked as a child, I understand now how that could lead to constant feelings of anxiety and the fear of potential annihilation. And also how that fed into my becoming the projection screen for the N spouse's weird world. I was bred to become a perfect blank screen, a sounding board. If I asserted my self, I was dismissed or targeted. I simply did not count except when someone needed me.On the other hand, outside of 'family', I have felt seen, felt, and heard. I came to know that my family life was itself a kind of unreality, or at least, not the only credible one. My ghostly self still occupies the kind of spaces between realities. As a visual artist and writer however, I also get to create images of what is unseen and unfelt and make them real. Now that I am out of the relationship with the N, I have time and space to recover my self, and to counter those feelings of potential annihilation with knowledge of my effectiveness and affect in the world. I am finding out that the world does indeed respond to me, and I to it. And that I am anchored in it and within it.

What I want to say is that it is very important to me to have my own experiences reflected back in a very real way. Thank you very much for your article. It made my own experiences real and acknowledged. Please re-publish this one regularly! It ought to be seen, read, and heard again and again!

Wow. Yes... described so perfectly. I always thought it was just my problem because I did not fit. But I was an avid writer and have journals back to high school. I was writing about my families abuse for decades. Facing it, coming to terms with it, and then I just stopped. I am not sure why I stopped writing. I did get a job where for the first time I felt seen and appreciated. But a recent relationship with an old N friend sent me into utter despair and pain. And I have asked myself alot of questions about why I was so succeptible. And I found myself looking at my mother And realizing she is an N and that I was the family scapegoat. And the interesting thing is that I am reading old journals and I had described without understanding being invisible to my mother. But what was hard was to have all those feelings but then to disappear around her. It was crazy making. But last summer I was in so much pain from the N and I went to stay with my mother and I had in the back of my head that by doing so, I would naturally shut down and disappear and it would help me with dealing with the N friend. But it was also at my wedding... my sister and mother and family all made me feel invisble. In fact no one even said anything about me... no speech or warm words. All of my father's family did though about me and my husband. What couled not have been more apparent than that?

It's a terrible feeling. You feel hollow. As if the wind would blow right through you. Add on top of that that I was traumatized by an accident as a child and disassociate from the pain and even't and my life was about never existing...

I've spent my life trying to stay "small". Its my explanation to being invisible. I was once told by an empath that I have a large personality and an aura that people are drawn to when I enter a room. (Note: I did not seek out this person. She is a friend of my sister I met when our parents died 5 weeks apart.) I laughed because I thought how could she be talking about me. I continued my 'need' to be small by marrying alcoholics (two marriages). Addicts have strong narcissistic personalities. As much as it hurts to acknowledge how I have failed myself in this life, I cannot begin to imagine another way of thinking. I need to be needed. That by itself is an empty, self-defeating existence.

You have a choice: continue life as it has been and continue feeling hurt about failing yourself and living what you call an empty, self-defeating existence or step out of your comfort zone and start doing, seeing, and feeling things differently.

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The Narcissist's Child contains my experiences as the child of a malignant narcissist and my understanding of the disorder. It is an attempt to describe and demonstrate the dynamics of a relationship with a malignant narcissist, particularly a malignant narcissist mother, to people who have little or no experience with the disorder, those who have been left reeling by the unexpected repercussions of being involved with a narcissist, and for those who, having been involved with one, need the support that come from knowing that you are not alone.

I am not a mental health professional and nothing on The Narcissist's Child should be taken as an expert opinion. This are my experiences, perceptions, and opinions, nothing more. Nothing here is a substitute for the advice of or the diagnosis and treatment by, a mental health professional. Do not rely on information on this site as a substitute for the advice of a qualified mental health professional.

Some links on this site lead to information or resources maintained by third parties. The Narcissist's Child makes no representations as to accuracy, integrity or any other aspect of the linked resources: use at your own risk.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the innocent and guilty alike (and to rob the narcissists of the glory of seeing their names or stories in print).

Use of this blog constitutes your understanding, acceptance of, and agreement to these terms.